Raw One-Name Study

Study details

About the study

I started researching my family history in 2007 for both my mother and father’s lines. My mother’s maiden name was Raw and where I was born and brought up, Darlington in Co. Durham I couldn’t recall anyone else with this surname or indeed in the years after I moved away, coming across anyone with this name, so thought it must be uncommon. I knew from my mother that grandad’s family were originally from Swaledale in North Yorkshire and I could recall day trips there when I was a child.

I was somewhat surprised when I found that my great grandfather Thomas Demain Raw had married Ann Raw. My immediate thought was that they must be related, perhaps cousins. I started tracing their ancestors but couldn’t find any link and at this point realised that Raw was quite a common surname in that area. Undeterred, I decided that I would try to find a common ancestor for the Raw dynasty which of course proved impossible (at least to date!) or even finding one originating family. However by now I was hooked on the idea at looking at the Raw surname and it’s origins.

After some initial attempts at family reconstructions, I took the Pharos course on One-Name Studies led by Helen Osbourne, in 2017 which introduced me to the Guild and ideas on methodology which helped me get started on a more systematic approach to the study.

Name frequency

The number of census records for Raw indicated that it would be a "medium" size one-name study.

Estimates are that in the fourteenth century there would be between 80 and 120 people with this surname.

Year

1851

1881

1350

England Pop

16,800,000

35,500,000

2,500,000

RAW

764

1158

bet 82 and 114

By 2017 the estimated number of people with this surname is around 1,600.

ONS Rank

ONS Count 2002

ONS Est Liv Pop 2017

ONS Est Pop since 16th century

4,084

1,780

1,655

6,230

This is supported by the numbers found in the Census figures since 1841, which sees an increase from around 780 to 1,500 in 1939.

Year

Ancestry

FMP

UK Census Online

1841

766

785

889

1851

764

877

869

1861

1007

937

1061

1871

1070

1009

1064

1881

1158

1082

1134

1891

1223

1179

1288

1901

1320

1306

1372

1911

1838

1484

1468

1939

1480

Distribution of the name

Although, I am still very much in the initial stages of data collection, I have realised that although clearly Raw is very much a northern surname that it was more widespread than I initially believed. It is found all through Swaledale, where my ancestors are from and to a lesser extend in the neighbouring Wensleydale. I have found links to show that the families moved from one dale to another so not entirely unlikely that they may be originally related. There is another very large cluster of Raws around Whitby, most particularly Fryup, again in North Yorkshire and another in Pateley Bridge, which although geographically in West Yorkshire is just over the border from North Yorkshire.

With the decline of the lead mining in the Yorkshire Dales much of the population moved away to seek work elsewhere. Many of the Raws moved to Durham to work in the coalfields, whilst some emigrated to America to work in all types of mining.

The Raw families of Whitby and its surrounding countryside were involved in farming and their descendants largely seemed to stay in the area and continue to farm the land.

Pateley Bridge Raw families were generations of stone masons and are found pursuing this trade in the 1911 Census.

As I now live in Manchester, I have always bemoaned the fact that all my family history is on the other side of the Pennines. I was delighted therefore to find George Raw, a tailor, in Prestwich, which is an area of north Manchester a few miles from where I live. George married a local girl in 1782 and had a large number of children. He appears in the 1841 Census giving him a birthdate of 1766. Unfortunately I cannot find a baptism record for him anywhere so don’t know where he originated from.